An amazing insult, tbh

The Repubs wanted to come in and strong-arm everybody into doing what they wanted. They didn’t consider that the other guy could just walk away and avoid the interaction entirely tho. Gonna be seeing a lot more of this

AGREED. We need to be moving further away from tribalism and isolationism, not back toward it. This path we’re on is the complete opposite of the Star Trek-esque utopia I always envisioned.

Of course it works out if you throw any numbers in that you want. Minimum hourly wage in the US is 7.25-ish in Alabama and the rest of the decrepit South, to 16-ish in California. I googled minimum wage in China and its roughly 3.40-ish at its highest. At the worst, China is half as expensive, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the disparity between the actual industrial areas of China and Califonia/Colorado for example might be 8x.

Whats happening here is that the poorly educated South is wanting me to subsidize their lack of marketable job skills by making me pay extra for American goods instead of Chinese goods.

And don’t forget that the extra money these Americans earn will be partially consumed by the extra cost of living anyways. Not to mention the years or decades of investment it will take to get factories set here anyways, all for low-skill, physically demanding, and mentally unengaging employment.

Manufacturing should be automated anyways because nobody should have to sit at a conveyor belt all day and toil their lives away assembling dumb trinkets.

But they’re not going to increase wages to account for us having to spend 55 dollars on something that used to cost 5. So the end result is just that people end up with less overall. I’m cool with limiting consumerism, but this isn’t the way to do it imo. And it’s not going to make us “richer” as a nation.

And we haven’t even addressed the whole reason manufacturing left in the first place. It’s so much cheaper to do it overseas, even accounting for shipping. It will cost America much more to produce items internally–and who is going to buy these extra-expensive items? America is a service economy and most people are working at Walmart or McDonald’s. These people can barely afford the cheap Chinese version, much less the expensive American version.

So I guess they’re hoping wages will increase more than the extra expensive incurred by making our own items? Not going to happen, not in a million years.

From Texas. They’re not going to attract the best and brightest down there.

Yeah, I’m discouraged to even buy American because Trump and the Republicans have basically turned that into a nationalist policy. I used to love buying American and local, but it feels gross to think that I’m supporting their agenda.

If this were the 1930s, Musk would be blaming Poland for not submitting to the Nazis in the same way.

Please do it. The most impacted will be the business owners, companies, and country folk that grind through cars the quickest. I have to drive, but I’m set up to go a very long time before I need a “new” car.

This is the way. I wish more people would accept what is quite literally only minor inconvenience in the name of starving these insane companies. We honestly have it so good in most of modern society, and some things are just totally optional imo.

Thanks

As an American, I also plan to buy as little American as I possibly can for the next 4 years. Corporate greed and bribery is what won the election, after all.

I care because it’s dumb and petty, and I refuse to let dumb petty things get an easy pass.

China isn’t going to come get me because Trump and his cronies don’t like my lifestyle

The way to go about this is to just download Linux Mint and begin using it. No additional overthinking is necessary. You’ll be able to get Steam working pretty easy, if that’s your thing. Internet bowsers and a word processor are already installed and working out of the box.

I love you deadmau5

Dang it, was going to make this same joke lol

This person may have voted in the latest election. Did you? Hahaha

It’s been years, and I still haven’t recovered from the ending of Outer Wilds. I don’t think I ever want to either, haha

I think the difference is that blacksmiths created things that were tangibly useful, that people needed, and that they needed in large quantities quickly and cheaply. The whole point of art is that it does not have real-world usefulness, past the enjoyment of it for the sake of the enjoyment of it.

For example, people frequently refer to cars as “art”, because they are beautiful, but “beauty” isn’t necessarily the same as “art”. Cars are beautiful because they invoke the principles of art, whatever they may be. The base principles themselves are complex and intangible, and you’d be hard-presses to find a book that explained what art actually is, because it is not well defined.

Only people can do art, as far as we know. AI can only produce things that resemble art, and they have only been able to do so by copying what real people have done. If real artists stop outputting material, there will never be an original artistic expression created ever again.

AI may be able to generate clip art and pretty text, but nobody is going to flock to the theaters, or attend auctions to acquire what is basically clip art.

This is not at all like creating a metal blade, imo. The tech bros just don’t understand art.